I’ve just started Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred, which is tough as nails and makes me feel like I’m gonna die. I’m also training for a 5K and running three times a week. Sometimes, I’ll get a flash of how far I’ve come and how hard it has been and how hard it’s going to be to carry on, get more intense, and get to where I really want to be. Fit, fine, and healthy. In the midst of the workout, with Jillian barking encouragement at me or with the feel of my feet pounding the pavement and the wind in my face…I cry.

I am NOT a big crier to begin with. I hate to cry. But there’s something almost cathartic about pushing myself so hard. For a kinkster, there’s something reminiscent of a terribly challenging impact scene. Of saying, “I can’t take anymore!” and then being asked, “Can you take three more for me?” You steel yourself, you grit your teeth, you murmur a “Yes, Sir”, and you fucking take it. And you love it. Deep down in your steaming guts, you love it.

I missed that feeling. And now I can almost taste it again.

But if anyone still wants to beat the stuffin’ outta me…Well. You know how to reach me.

Prior to receiving this DVD, I had never heard of Lust Cinema, an online adult movie theater. I’m incredibly pleased to know of it now! Cabaret Desire is just one of Erika Lust’s three erotic movies. It is beautifully, artistically filmed, opening with shots of women being laced into corsets and putting on make-up, and snippets of a bar full of people watching a man in a leotard (Luizo Vega) performing a lovely, powerful pole dance. The premise of this 75 minute film is that the bar is staffed with poets or storytellers who will read erotica, presenting patrons with imagery to tease and tantalize, thus setting the stage for a series of pornographic vignettes.

#1: The Two Alexes (17 minutes)

As a poet begins to read to one of the patrons, the scene cuts to a different bar where a cute, curvy blonde woman (Sofia Prada) bartends and gets the phone numbers of two of her smokin’ hot customers, a male Alex (Tony Fontana) and a female Alex (Saskia Condal). She later takes them on the same dates, sings them the same songs, and eroticizes the dichotomy – the fact that they each offer different experiences under the same name.

Following the pattern of showing bits and pieces with each Alex, the sex scene swaps back and forth between the male and female experience. For me, this mimics the way that I usually watch porn. I tend to patch together a few different films as I fantasize, hopping from one video to another. This movie has that built in. I love it. It makes for a very dynamic viewing experience. You get a taste of a little oral, manual, strap-on, penis-in-vagina, in various positions. It’s all beautiful and passionate. Wonderfully, it doesn’t end with a facial, but with cuddling instead.

Are you fat? Are you muscular? Are you pregnant? Are you post-pubescent? Well, then you probably have stretch marks! Stretch marks are hideous, disgusting lines that develop when your body changes, marring the beautiful, airbrushed smoothness of your otherwise perfect skin. You should probably invest in a veritable army of creams, balms, oils, butters, and lotions before resorting to expensive laser treatments and tummy tucks to remove those nasty streaks from your flesh.

You know what? SCREW THAT NOISE.

Stretch marks rock. I once dated a guy who liked to run his fingers along the shallow, silvery lines on the sides of my hips. You know when I got those? When I hit puberty and I softened and my hips spread out and I developed the luscious curves that some women are known for. Whether you are male or female or anywhere outside or in between, you may have them on your breasts or your inner thighs or your backside or your upper arms or just about any damn place. All of those places that flesh out as we grow up.

Stretch marks happen with growth. You have stretch marks? Congratulations! You survived puberty. You developed breasts or muscles or gained a bit of weight. Hell, you might have even had a baby!

These things tell our story on the very surface of our skin. They’re like that scar on your knuckle from when you accidentally somersaulted over the handlebars of your bike or the one over your left eyebrow from when you had chicken pox as a kid or the one on your elbow where you knocked a girl’s teeth out when she tried to catch the same fly ball as you during a high school softball game. (Who, me? Couldn’t be.) Why don’t more women wear stretch marks and wrinkles and gray hair and scars as a badge of honor? As a sign that we’re ALIVE?

I hereby embrace my stretch marks. I earned those fucking things. I’m becoming fit and healthy and I don’t really give a good goddamn if they go away or not. In fact, I might miss them a little if they do.

If you know me in real life, you know that I talk a lot. Sometimes, I think I just talk for the sake of talking. In that same vein, I’m pretty sure I sometimes complain just for the sake of complaining.

I have been thinking about this lately, both in terms of the mental health implications and the impact on my relationships. Is complaining healthy? Does it help you to have a calmer state of mind, without the weight of your concerns, stresses, and emotions all weighing on you? I have always felt that it’s better for you to let it all out. Ranting and venting makes you feel better, but…what does it do to the people to whom you complain?

When I was in high school, my friend S told me that she felt like every time she talked to me, everything I was saying was negative or pessimistic. At first, I was angry! How dare she shatter my notions that I was an upbeat and optimistic person? But I later realized she was probably right and I felt grateful that she pointed it out to me. For a while, I tried to reign in my negativity and focus on the positive, both internally, in the way my thoughts were, and externally, in the way that I presented them to the world.

Of course, somewhere along the way, I totally forgot about that.

Your emotions and your thoughts have an impact on you and your state of mind, particularly when you keep them bottled up. However, when you put them out into the world, they’re not just disappearing. They’re affecting the people around you. They might be making the other person cranky, frustrated, or sad. They might be creating contempt, annoyance, or distaste for the object of your complaints where there previously was none. They might even be making the other person reconsider his or her opinions of you and your junky attitude, causing them to develop contempt, annoyance, or distaste for you.

In short, do I really need to analyze and log away all the slightly negative feelings I might run across during class or during work or during a meeting so that I can rant about them later? Are they really that vexing? Or should I just let them go? Unless they are truly pressing and something can be done to change them, then why hang onto them? If I let my irritations and frustrations go shortly after noticing and acknowledging them, then I won’t have a need to get them off my chest because I won’t be storing them up for future reference.

Takeaway lesson – complain carefully in moderation, particularly where and when it will have a positive impact.

Sorry I’ve been absent. The semester is coming to a close, so I’ve been busy writing papers about wet and messy play and sexual function in intersex adults and the history of society’s attitudes about masturbation. Be back soon!

This may sound silly, but I just learned yesterday that civil unions can be entered into by different-sex couples, as well as same-sex couples (in some states). As a female-identified person who hopes to marry a male-identified person one day, I had never considered the concept of civil union as opposed to marriage. It actually seems fairly appealing to me, now that I know it’s an option. I am not religious. Marriage was originally a religious institution. Furthermore, I am opposed to the patriarchal values implied by the traditional format of marriage. I would prefer a union in the form of a partnership. That is not to say that that can’t be achieved in a marriage as well, but…to me, even the word “marriage” carries somewhat negative undertones.

How do you feel about the fact that civil unions allow for similar legal rights to those afforded by marriage, but without using the same title? Homosexual couples are allowed civil union, but not allowed marriage, despite the similarities. Do you consider this “separate but equal” mentality to be acceptable?

Would you consider a civil union as opposed to a marriage? Why? Why not?

Welcome to the Rainy Day Review!

I’m Mimi! I’m an independent sexuality educator and a graduate school student working towards my master's in human sexuality and in social work. Have a question? Visit the True or False page above and ask away!